Nvidia GeForce GTX 465 Review: Right for Rehabilitation. Page 8

Our preview of the new GeForce GTX 465 was not very optimistic. Today Nvidia’s newcomer that is destined to compete against such a dangerous rival as Radeon HD 5850 has a chance to restore its reputation. Our lab received the first mass production graphics card from Zotac based on the new Nvidia chip.

Far Cry 2

The GeForce GTX 465 looks good in Far Cry 2 whose engine cannot boast cutting-edge capabilities. At the two lower resolutions the new card is as good as the Radeon HD 5850 in terms of average frame rate and even better than the latter in terms of bottom speed. The lack of graphics memory bandwidth shows up at 2560x1600 but overclocking helps bridge the gap whereas the frame rate of the new card is high enough for comfortable play.

Metro 2033

This game is tested without multisampling antialiasing as it worsens the textures and provokes a performance hit.

The GeForce GTX 465 behaves in an unusual way here. It is generally slower than the Radeon HD 5850 and the GeForce GTX 275 at high resolutions, but in Metro 2033 it falls behind the GeForce GTX 275 at 1600x900 and overtakes the latter at 1920x1080 and 2560x1600. There is no competing with the Radeon HD 5850, though. With tessellation turned off, it takes at least a GeForce GTX 470. And as we learned before in our Review, when tessellation is turned on, the GeForce GTX 480 is the only graphics card to deliver a playable speed at resolutions above 1600x900.

S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Call of Pripyat

We use the game’s DirectX 10.1 and DirectX 11 modes for graphics cards that support them.

The new card behaves consistently in this game, too. It does not show anything exceptional at low resolutions and leaves the GeForce GTX 275 far behind at high ones. Its speed is barely enough for comfortable play at 1600x900, occasionally bottoming out below the required 25 fps. It must be noted that the Radeon HD 5850 is not much better, but has a higher average frame rate.

Wolfenstein

This game is tested in multiplayer mode that uses the OpenGL API. The integrated benchmark does not report the bottom frame rate.

The Wolfenstein engine is too simple for the top-end graphics cards like GeForce GTX 480 and 470 to show their best. It is the sheer amount of hardware resources which is necessary here. The Radeon HD 5850 and even the GeForce GTX 275 have enough of them, but the GeForce GTX 465 has only 44 texture processors and low GPU and memory clock rates. As a result, its performance is downright poor, especially at 2560x1600.